


Dog and Butterfly

by kita (thekita)



Category: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-11
Updated: 2017-09-11
Packaged: 2018-12-26 15:18:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12061665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thekita/pseuds/kita
Summary: After Steve dies, Diana disappears.





	Dog and Butterfly

Dog and Butterfly

After the war (to end all), Diana disappears. 

She spends months uncounted on far-away beaches, islands rarely touched by an outsider’s hands. Sometimes she lays with boys, or girls, always pretending she cannot speak their language. At night she sits by the shoreline and tries to remember what her sea smelled like (clinging to Steve’s skin; once the magic touches you it never completely fades). But the oceans here belong to fishermen, and Diana cannot see the curve of the earth. The stars above her head are wrong.

She is back before the first bombs fall on London. 

Then she is again in the midst of man’s war; the stench and the smoke, good earth crumbling to ruins beneath her feet. The spectre of Ares hangs like a shroud (all the old gods are dead). And Diana has read stories of the people’s new god- this Jesus who sacrificed himself to save them, thousands of years before. But it was a scarce two decades ago that Diana killed a god with her own hands. And hadn’t Steve also died to save the world?

Somehow, the world is still the same. Dying men will always scream for their mothers. 

*

“Thank you for bringing him back to me.”

Bruce’s reply is a single word:

_Dinner?_

The restaurant is much like Bruce himself- muted colors carefully wrapped in well polished shine. The chandelier overhead twinkles in a poor approximation of the night sky. Bruce’s tie is black, woven through with silver. It reminds Diana of a sword (tucked only half-hidden into the back of her evening gown. Of course Batman would wear his front and center). 

Their corner table is draped in shadow but faces the exit. Bruce watches, no he studies her from across the pristine tablecloth. Then he lifts his glass in a toast. 

“To Steve Trevor,” he says. 

Diana hasn’t heard his name spoken aloud in nearly a century.

It takes her a moment. 

“To Steve,” she replies, finally. And they drink. 

They spend three hours drinking, all the while playing one- upmanship games disguised as flirtation. Or perhaps it’s the other way around. This is the most Diana has ever heard Bruce speak. Halfway through the evening however, she understands he has actually said nothing. 

By the time they rise to leave, they are the only patrons left in the restaurant. Bruce holds the door for her. The summer air is too heavy, too warm. Diana has to lift her long black skirt to climb into the car. His gaze travels the length of her legs, from ankles to exposed thigh. But his expression never changes, and he makes no move toward her. 

The glass partition between them and the driver slides closed. 

They fuck in the limo until he is sweating, salty drops that run down his chest where she has torn his shirt. Bruce’s eyes are open but his teeth are clenched as she rides him, her nails digging hard into the suit jacket still across his shoulders. 

Bruce is the same as any other man. They all look a little bit in love when they come. 

She kisses him with un-careful teeth before slipping her heels back on and opening the car door. He watches her go. The remnants of her lipstick cover his mouth and chin; a dark, garish slash of red beneath the lamplight. Then he closes the limousine window, and Diana can see nothing at all. 

She doesn’t actually like Bruce. She discovers it is not necessary.

*

Diana dreams of water: Sailing away on moonlit blue until the fog came to steal it, reducing her island to an invisible memory across a horizon she will never find again. That night on the boat she had to look away as her home slowly disappeared. She wishes now that she’d watched til the end. What if one day, she forgets? 

(“I prayed for you,” her mother once told her. “I created you from the clay and I prayed until Zeus himself breathed life into you.”

It is still such a beautiful lie.)

And she remembers: Rocked to sleep by the shush of waves and the creak of sails, Steve had turned closer to her. He slung one arm tightly around her waist, a human attempt at protection she’s never needed. But his breath was warm and steady against the side of her neck, and she slept, unmoving until daybreak.

* 

This close, Bruce smells like leather and smoke. Diana has never seen him with a cigarette.

His training room is all one would expect from a superhero with a tight black suit fetish. The walls are lined with weapons that even she does not want to know how he might have acquired. Thick mats cover most of the floor space. They are meticulously clean.

The first time she sparred with Bruce he’d been far too controlled, punching her hard enough to make her ears ring, yet light enough that her head had barely snapped back. Whether he was restraining himself because she was a woman or because they sometimes had sex she did not know. But it had angered her, a fist of fire in her belly that ended with a roundhouse kick to Bruce’s head. He flew a good ten feet into the padded wall, landing with an inert thud, like meat falling to the floor. 

Then he climbed to his feet, blood on his nose and chin. And he grinned. 

She remembers thinking this was the first real expression he’d worn all night. More likely, the first she’d seen ever seen on his face. 

Now Bruce does not hold back. Sometimes they fuck on those same mats. And after, the fingerprint bruises on his hips will match those made by a fist to his face. They will linger for a while. 

He manages to split Diana’s lip. Once.

*

Before her one night with Steve in Veld, Diana had never known what it meant to be cold. As they huddled together sharing a column of breath she could see between them, Diana decided she liked winter. Steve watched her, smiling as she stared upward while the bank of clouds rolled in. The moon was low and heavy, making it seem far too bright to be proper nightfall. Despite the storm she could feel coming, crackling in her bones like logs in a fire, Diana could still number the stars. She had to stop herself from reaching out, as if the heavens had suddenly become close enough to touch. Steve’s hand in hers was warm and solid. Real. For the first time since she’d come, she felt a part of this strange place. 

The snow started to fall. 

Even the raucous laughter of a hundred and more soldiers became muted, distant, as everything around them turned to white. Steve twirled her round and round in it, and she let him. Let herself become dizzy with laughter, and a feeling she had no name for, yet.

Steve’s voice was hushed too, reverent. Made Diana shiver.

“It’s like being inside a snow globe,” he said, looking at the sky. Frost glittered on his eyelashes.

(Glass bubbles; perfectly rendered scenes of joy, trapped in time and unchanging. Forever still.)

She pressed her lips to his. Steve’s kiss was whiskey cut with gunpowder; new and foreign tastes that made her hungry. 

(Soon inside his tent she will arch beneath him until he groans, long and broken. And he will look at her like he’s in love.)

It will take Diana years to realize Steve had looked at her that way from the moment they met.

*

This time, they make it to the bed. 

Sheets tangle sweaty and discarded around their ankles, and the candles have burned down to their ends. Bruce winces, sitting up. When he turns to look at her, his neck cracks with a small pop.

Diana pulls her bra off the bedpost as Bruce reaches for the whiskey.

He drains the glass in one go. Then, “Can you even be hurt?”

The question is more than mere curiosity, she knows that much. But although he is naked and looking right at her, she cannot read his face. Bruce has so many more masks than just the Batman. 

(She had been mermaid and siren, all the ancient myths just as real as the god Diana hadn’t yet known she was. She sang Steve back to life with the naivest of hopes before following him the same, across an ocean she will not be allowed to see again. Themyscira and Steve are inextricably tied to one another by memories alight with sunshine over waves, and a full moon reaching down to touch first snow.)

She can name all these feelings now. And perhaps Steve is not meant to be her greatest love (Diana will live forever) but he is certainly her greatest sorrow. 

_one day maybe you’ll tell me your story_

Diana smiles. “There’s always tomorrow,” she says.

*

As always, Bruce walks her to her door. As always, Diana does not invite him in. 

The large silver box remains untouched on her dining table. She sits down to open it. 

Diana stares at the picture, running her fingertips over Steve’s face. One hundred years, and hers looks precisely the same. Time is arbitrary and Diana may be immortal, but sometimes all she feels is old.

She plucks the photo from its box to lay it face down inside a drawer she rarely opens. The watch she holds onto for a while; it is solid, heavy in the palm of her hand. Her heels click in time with the soft _tick tock tick_ as she walks to the fireplace. Then she sets the watch very carefully atop the mantle, next to the snowglobe.

 

-End


End file.
